River Island Design Forum: Baartmans & Siegel

River Island's third menswear partner debuts a short film.

With a 12-piece collection set to launch this September, Dutch-British duo Baartmans & Siegel are the third menswear label to partner with River Island’s Design Forum initiative, following successful collections with both Joseph Turvey and T. Lipop.

Designed by Wouter Baartmans and Amber Siegel (he bringing the Dutch, she the British), the capsule line sees the pair produce a full wardrobe of subtle but intriguing separates, including leather zip tops, smart grey joggers and their trademark parka jackets.

Made with the same attention to detail as their mainline collection, Wouter and Amber were also “able to explore new technical aspects that we have wished to create for some time” thanks to River Island’s extensive network within the industry.

          

 

As has become tradition for the brand’s program, River Island commissioned a short film to accompany the collection. In the director’s seat this season was Ryan Hopkinson, whose CV includes prior projects with Issey Miyake and Christopher Raeburn.

“The tone and the feel of the pictures they had pulled (for reference), I think immediately resonated with things that I’m currently interested in,” he told River Island behind the scenes (watch that video here).

For the designers, the chance to work with him had been a long time coming, as Amber noted: “For a while now we’ve been wanting to work with Ryan as he has a really beautiful eye for capturing product, but also creating a fantastic story that feels really masculine and edgy.”

www.riverisland.com

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